


vi. betrayed

by tempestaurora



Series: it's okay, we're okay [whumpvember 2018] [6]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Gen, Peter Parker is Tony Stark's Biological Child, Set During Iron Man 1, Whump, Whumptober, small child to the rescue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-06
Updated: 2018-11-06
Packaged: 2019-08-19 19:30:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16540751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tempestaurora/pseuds/tempestaurora
Summary: Peter was nine when the Strange Things happened.When his dad, Tony Stark, disappeared for three months straight and no one would tell Peter where he was.When Obadiah Stane, one of the four people Tony had promised Peter he could trust besides him, tore out his Dad's heart.





	vi. betrayed

**Author's Note:**

> wow this isn't fluffy at all maybe i lied to you about this being a fluffy month i'm sure i wrote some somewhere
> 
> i'm still emotional about hydra's not a home finishing so accept this gift and let me mourn

Peter was nine when the Strange Things happened. When his dad, Tony Stark, disappeared for three months straight and no one would tell Peter where he was. During that time, Peter bounced around a lot from person to person, no one fully sure who should be looking after Tony Stark’s son while the man himself was lost, somewhere out in Afghanistan.

Some days, he would be left in Pepper Potts’ care. She was his dad’s personal assistant and Tony had once whispered to him that she did all his work, really, and that he could trust her with anything, even his secrets. And so the days he stayed with Pepper Potts, following her through Stark Industries buildings and sitting on the floor of his dad’s office while she tried to get his left over work in order were good days, because he liked her. And the nights he spent in her guest room at her fancy apartment  -  _Tony pays me too much to live in a shoebox, sweetie_ – were good nights, because if he woke up afraid and calling out for his dad, she’d always come running, and if he was crying she’d always offer ice cream and stay with him until he fell asleep.

And some days he’d be with Happy Hogan, the second of four people Tony promised Peter he could always trust. Days with Happy were spent running around after him – he was a fast walker – and sitting in the passenger seat of fancy cars while Happy drove Pepper and Stane and other important people around. He never stayed at Happy’s place overnight, though, because Happy said his apartment wasn’t  _kid friendly_  and while Peter was  _apartment friendly_  apparently the two wouldn’t go together.

He spent only two days with Rhodey, while his father was missing, because Rhodey was searching for his dad and couldn’t be distracted. But on those days, Rhodey would take Peter around the airbase and show him the planes and Peter would ask a thousand questions and Rhodey would take care to answer them all.

The rest of the days, maybe the bulk of the days in fact, were spent with Obadiah Stane. Peter knew he was partners with his dad – they ran the company together and Stane had practically raised Tony Stark, after Peter’s grandparents died, long before Peter was even alive. On those days, he sat on the sofa in Obie’s office and played with Lego or drew on a pad of paper during his meetings, making sure to stay quiet and unassuming in the background. Everyone knew Peter was a prodigy like his father and everyone knew Peter would run the company one day – Obie told him a lot about it, in fact.

_You’re going to be the next Tony, one day,_  he’d say with the kind of smile that made Peter nervous. But Obie was one of the four people who Peter could trust with anything, so Peter always told him when he was scared he wouldn’t see his dad again, and Peter always let him know when he was building something new.

And then his dad came back, beaten and bloody and holding Peter so tight that Peter wasn’t sure he would ever breathe again, but he didn’t mind because at least his family had come back to him.

So when Obie started getting annoyed or had a look akin to thunder on his face, Peter didn’t tell his dad, because his dad had only just got back and besides, there were other people he could tell.

“Obie looks mad,” Peter told Pepper. Tony was down in the lab and Pepper was still running around trying to save the company after Peter’s dad announced they would stop making weapons.  _(Sure, the bigger stick holds the power,_ Tony had explained it to Peter,  _but could you imagine if there were no sticks at all?)_

“Well your dad did something that made him nervous,” Pepper replied, not looking up from her laptop. There were papers spread out across the sofa and Peter was building a Lego house on the coffee table. On the television, the news played quietly, numbers and names running across the screen with what Peter recognised as stocks.

“I don’t think it’s that,” Peter replied. “I think he’s mad that dad’s back at all.”

Pepper frowned, looking up. “Obadiah’s happy that he’s back,” she said. “Really. We’re all just a little on edge because building weapons – it’s what this company does. It pays for everything else we want to do.”

Peter frowned, eyes stuck on his Lego house. “Well the company would change eventually,” he said. “So Obie shouldn’t be so annoyed about it now.”

“Why’s that?”

Peter shrugged. “Because it’s gonna be my company one day and I’m not building weapons for anyone.”

Peter was nervous about Obie, still. Especially when the annual Stark gala happened and Peter noticed his dad leave for it half way through, as if he hadn’t been told about its existence. They had a sitter that stayed with Peter a lot because of Tony’s work in the lab, and Peter watched the news as they set up his Scalextric race track and picked out their cars. In the background of an interview with someone else, Obie and Tony seemed to be arguing and Peter frowned, because Obie wasn’t supposed to argue with his dad.

So Peter wasn’t  _surprised_  necessarily when Obie tore out his father’s heart and left him paralysed and dying on the sofa. He was surprised that that’s the way Obie would hurt his dad – Obie, one of the four people Peter could trust with anything – but not that he would hurt Tony at all.

Because Obie had a sort of smile that Peter didn’t trust and spending so long in his boring meetings while Tony was away told Peter too much about the kind of person he was. Later, when Tony explained to him that Obie had been giving weapons to the enemies as well as the US military –  _dealing under the table_ \- Peter huffed and waved a hand.

“He eats cereal without milk, too,” Peter said. “I knew he was bad news.”

But on the day Tony’s heart was ripped out, Peter was in bed, reading with his nightlight though his reading time should’ve ended an hour before. He heard his dad’s voice, quiet, and then a strange, distant ringing, and crept out of his room, moving to the staircase. He peeked around it long enough to see Obie leaning over his dad, the two of them talking in murmurs that Peter couldn’t hear.

There was a pause, then something strangled, and Obie was moving away and leaving the house while Peter was left staring at the hole in his father’s chest. The second Obie was gone, Peter ran down the stairs, leaping onto the sofa by his father’s side.

“Dad! Dad, can you hear me? Daddy, come on, please.” Peter didn’t want to cry but there were black veins on the sides of Tony’s face and his skin was a shade of purple, like he couldn’t breathe. The hole in his chest where the arc reactor was meant to sit was empty, a shiny silver, and Peter hated how far he could see into his father’s body.

His dad’s eyes were twitching, though, and Peter took that as a sign that he was alive.

“What do I do? Dad – what do I do?”

It took too long for Tony to be able to breathe out half words that Peter could barely decipher. It took too long to realise that he had to run to the lab and leave his father, defenceless and paralysed on the sofa. When he was down there, he typed in the code with shaking hands – messing it up three times before getting it right – and then looking around in a daze.

What could possibly help here? There were tools and pieces of Iron Man armour (Peter knew his dad was Iron Man but didn’t know if his  _dad_  knew that Peter knew that) and prototypes of things Peter couldn’t even figure out. But he knew that his dad needed an electromagnet to keep the shrapnel from his heart-

Hadn’t he had another one? Wasn’t the one that Obie stole the second?

“JARVIS,” Peter said, looking up at the ceiling. “Does Dad have another mini arc reactor?”

There was a pause, then, “Yes, three tables to your right. It’s in a glass box.”

Peter ran over, searching with wide eyes until he caught side of it.  _Proof that Tony Stark has a heart._  It felt like a gift from Pepper. It felt like something Pepper would do.

He apologised to her silently before breaking the glass box on the table, crying out at the glass that shattered across his hands (he was already crying when he ran down to the lab but now he was bleeding too and the red was a lot like the shade of the Iron Man armour). Peter ignored the blood and snatched the arc reactor, turning back to run back up the stairs.

When he fit it into his father’s chest, it was like Tony Stark could breathe again.

When he could finally move, Tony said, his voice hoarse, “I’ve got to stop Obie. I’m sorry.”

Peter nodded. “JARVIS can call my sitter.”

Tony smiled and pressed a kiss to Peter’s forehead. “You’re growing up too fast, Pete. JARVIS, call the sitter, but keep an eye on Peter until she gets here, okay?” With the AI’s confirmation, Tony pressed one last kiss into Peter’s hair and started off down the lab, throwing an, “I love you” over his shoulder as he went.

Peter waited until Iron Man was gone before walking to the kitchen and washing his hands clean of the blood. He stuck a bunch of Dora the Explorer plasters across the cuts, then grabbed a blanket and climbed onto the sofa, turning the TV onto the news.

He’d wait for the breaking report on Iron Man that would inevitably come, and he’d stay up until his dad came home to put him to bed.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading!
> 
> pretty please talk to me in the comments! 
> 
> tomorrow: kidnapped


End file.
